Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/123

 THE PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT. 103 obscure and preponderant, that the more intelligent among these miserable creatures were able to play in the households of the great conquerors and unwearied hunters by whom the palaces at Khorsabad, Kouyundjik, and Nimroud, were successively occupied. All these military officers and adminstrators, these priests of the different gods, and the domestics who were often the most powerful of all, looked to the hand of the king himself and depended upon no other master. Courage and military talent must have been the surest roads to advancement, but sometimes, as under the Arab califs and the Ottoman sultans, the caprice of the sovereign would lead him to raise a man from the lowest ranks to the highest dignities of the state. The regime of Assyria may be described in the words applied to that of Russia, it was despotism tempered with assassination. " And it came to pass, as he (Sennacherib) was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his o-od, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with o y the sword : and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead." 1 Sennacherib's father, Sargon, perished in the same fashion. These murders were, perhaps, the revenge for some outrage or punishment imprudently inflicted in a moment of anger ; but however that may have been, neither in the one case nor the other did they hinder the legitimate heir from succeeding his father. Sennacherib replaced Sargon, and Esarhaddon Sennacherib. The Assyrian supremacy was only supported by the constant presence, at the head of the army, of a king ready for every eventuality ; a few weeks of anarchy or interregnum would have thrown the whole empire into confusion ; the royal power was the keystone of the arch, the element upon which depended the stability of a colossal edifice subjected to various strains. In such a society, art could hardly have had a mission other than the glorification of a power without limit and without control a power to which alone the Assyrians had to look for a continuance of their dearly-won supremacy. The architect, the sculptor, and the painter, ex- hausted the resources of their arts, the one in building a palace for the prince on a high mound raised to dominate the surrounding plain, the others in decorating it when built and multiplying the images of its almost divine inhabitant. The exploits of the 1 2 Kings xix. 37.